Butt out, with an app attack

The Canadian Cancer Society Break It Off campaign is a smartphone app to help smokers quit

Cindy Olberg used the Canadian Cancer Society's Break it Off app to quit smoking.

By:Fiona EllisSpecial to the Star, Published on Thu Jan 03 2013

Breaking up is hard to do. Especially when your long-term, significant other has been there for years, through the good times and bad.

“Cigarettes were the best boyfriend I ever had,” says Cindy Olberg. “They’re always there for you, during your stressful moments, or when you are on the go. Cigarettes were the longest relationship I had ever had.”

Olberg started smoking at 16, and smoked a pack a day. Now, 24, the Ottawa resident stopped smoking almost a year ago. She used the free Break It Off app (which likens quitting smoking to a relationship breakup) to help her quit once and for all.

Smoking tobacco is the main cause of lung cancer. On average, 70 Canadians will be diagnosed with lung cancer every day and 55 Canadians a day will die of the disease.

The Break It Off campaign was launched by the Canadian Cancer Society last January to roll out the smoking cessation message online, using social media and smartphone applications.

Using the app on her mobile, Olberg could access her breakup stats — how many cigarettes she resisted, how many slip-ups she’d had — to find out when she was at her most vulnerable. She could also share her achievements on Facebook, call a quit coach and get tools and advice to help her overcome cravings.

“The app tracks your behaviour and feeds it back to you in meaningful ways, so you can understand more fully what you are going through,” says Kyle A. McKeown, coordinator, communications, Smokers’ Helpline at the Canadian Cancer Society.

“You’re not always aware that at 2 p.m. every day you get up and go for a smoke without thinking about it.”

Young adults comprise the largest group of smokers in Canada at 24.4 per cent and are the greatest users of social media and smartphone technology — 62 per cent of young adult cellphone users own smartphones.

“If I had a craving or felt really stressed I just whipped out the app,” says Olberg.

“I didn’t replace the cigarettes with the app but it was sort of a nice little hug when I felt like I couldn’t do it any more.”

The University of Waterloo, funded by Health Canada, also has a mobile app: Crush the Crave. The app, launched in 2011, offers a customized quit plan to help young people monitor habits, understand craving triggers, share results and gain support from friends online. It also offers social media tools, such as videos and opportunities to chat with friends online to distract a user.

Technology, and especially the prevalence of smartphones, gets right to the problem immediately, says Bruce Baskerville, senior scientist at the University of Waterloo’s Propel Centre for Population Health Impact.

“Smartphones offer a smoker an intervention that takes place any time, anywhere and allows something to happen at the point of the problem.

“People carry their smartphones with them everywhere. It’s basically a computer and a phone, and it’s doing something that standalone web-based interventions have done in the past, but it’s ubiquitous.”

“Technology has enabled a coming together,” says McKeown.

“All of our services are available wherever you are, all of the time. So, if people have cravings they can pick up the phone and call wherever they are. If not, they can go online. That’s there 24 hours a day, seven days a week. It’s that availability that helps.”

Olberg says she’ll never look back. “I’m done for good. After everything I’ve gone through to quit and after all of the lovely words I’ve gotten from the smokers helpline, I’d be really disappointed in myself if I went back on them.”